Many science and engineering majors have neglected their
communication skills during their education. If this is true for you,
it can be a real problem because a lot of what you will be doing will
involve communicating what you have done to others. In fact, your
ability to accomplish that communication effectively can be crucial
to your success on the job; promotions, allocation of resources,
bonuses, etc. all can be strongly dependent on how well you
communicate. Don't let this slip by in your enthusiasm for your
technical subject matter.

1. Writing

For scientists, their success is judged mostly by their
publications. If you can't write so other people can know and
understand what you have done, you will have a pretty rough time
getting papers published in refereed journals. Writing your thesis
and dissertation can be a good chance to learn what it takes to
become an effective author, but developing the skills to write good
scientific papers is not a matter of one or two tries. Be prepared to
learn about writing skills for the rest of your career.

An excellent path to developing your writing skills is to
read a lot of papers in your field. Often, contributing
authors are asked to review papers within their domain of expertise.
Take this job of refereeing seriously! As I've noted already, it is
easier to see certain sorts of mistakes in someone else's paper than
it is to see in yours, so if you give an author a hard time for doing
something, be sure that you aren't guilty of the same sin. This is
not the venue for a discussion of reviewing papers, but one benefit
is that if you do it conscientiously, it almost certainly will make
you a better author.

Clearly, writing takes practice, so you should plan on reporting
on your work as often as appropriate. You can't learn a lot about
writing just by reading about how to do it. You have to participate,
and everything I've ever heard or read about good writing says that
you will be doing a lot of revisions . Go ahead and plan for
revisions, and don't try to write a perfect paper before you share it
with someone else. This means you should pass the paper on to someone
locally whose judgment you trust and who is willing to give it a
careful, critical reading. Develop a thick skin when it comes to
criticism of your work! A severe critic is your best friend in
learning how to write well; that critic will force you to clarity
of expression and will seek and find any weaknesses in your
presentation. Do you really want to go to press with a weak
presentation, or flaws in your reasoning, or misleading expressions
of what you did, or poorly-executed figures? Better to find these and
fix them in the review process than to have them pointed out to you
after the paper has appeared for all in your field to see! Too many
young writers (and even some experienced ones) shy away from
criticism. Don't let this happen to you, and you will become an
improved author every time.

Knowing when to stop the revision process before submitting
your paper to review is going to take some experience. In general, at
some point in the process, you will no longer be able to tell if the
paper is really getting better with each revision. This may be so
simply because you are thoroughly sick of the paper! This may be a
signal that you need to submit your paper to some sort of review
(perhaps among your colleagues or perhaps through the formal review
process), and waiting for the reviews to come back is a good time to
tackle another project, to get your mind off the paper. Then, when
the reviews come back, you will be refreshed and ready to finish the
last round of revisions in response to the comments you have
received.

Good papers that you read in the journals (Yes, there are good
papers out there!) are not the result of a single round of
writing by the author(s). Instead, they have been subjected to many
revisions after many people have done careful reviews of the content
and presentation that paper contains. Very few papers appear after
having sailed through the review process without changes, so get used
to the idea. It helps if you can at least create a good starting
point with the first pass, so learning what works and what doesn't
work in your technical writing is probably worth your putting in some
effort. You should get better at the process, with time and
experience.

Avoid certain pitfalls! There are several mistakes made by new
scientific authors (and some old veterans, too!). One is expositions
demonstrating the obvious. If you did something that confirmed that
some obvious answer did not work, that might deserve a short mention,
but avoid belaboring such points. A scientific paper need not
describe in detail everything you did; only some parts of the total
work effort end up being pertinent. By the same token, be careful not
to gloss over some point that needs to be explained carefully. There
is a fine line to be walked between these two extremes and for most
of us, experience is the way we learn how to find the proper balance
between detail and brevity. It often comes down to a matter of
focus: what are the main points you are trying to make? The
following are some other common problems in writing.

a. Figure description

A well-conceived figure does not need to be described in the text.
If you write sentences like "Figure 21 shows a graph of chinkadera
frequency as a function of time." then you are simply repeating the
content of the figure caption. This serves no obvious need, since the
reader certainly can read the caption. This is just deadwood.
Instead, you should cite the figure as you make the point:
"Chinkaderas decreased monotonically with time (Fig. 21), showing
that omphatel production had ceased."

Further, you may find yourself saying something like "As seen in
Fig. 17a, a boundary passing through central Illinois separates the
region of strong knutenary concentrations in northern Illinois from
weak concentrations in southern Illinois." If your figure shows
knutenary concentrations directly, then isn't this simply describing
what the readers can see for themselves? Is there some point
to be made by the figure? If so, make that point and cite the figure
to illustrate the point, saying something like "The knutenary
concentrations in Illinois (Fig. 17a) indicate that the gorphatz
process is dominating the situation." You do not need to fill the
text with descriptions of what the figures show; doing this amounts
to creating another form of deadwood. This discussion also applies to
tables as well as figures.

b. Too many figures

When you find your paper contains a lot of figure description and
relatively little else, then this can be a symptom of having too many
figures. This often springs from a desire to show everything you did.
In general, it is not necessary to document everything; you need to
show just enough to validate your interpretations. Opinions differ in
this regard, but every figure ought to serve a purpose in the paper,
not simply to document that you considered each item that each figure
represents. Figures require captions, they take extra work to create,
and (in my opinion) ought to be pared to the bare minimum to get the
point of your paper across. Figures also increase the cost of your
paper in several different ways, including page charges for
publication, if page charges are indeed required. Should your formal
referees and/or internal reviewers ask for more figures, fine. Go
ahead and include what they asked for. If they ask for them, it is a
good sign that you have been diligent in attempting to minimize the
number of illustrations.

c. Too many or too few references

Some authors feel obligated to show how well-read they are, and so
their papers read like a literature search. This attempt at being
"scholarly" often goes too far, with so many references, there seems
to be a bare minimum of original thought in the whole paper. On the
other hand, it is quite possible for there to be too few references,
thus giving the impression that the author has been working in a
vacuum in the literature. This is just as inappropriate, if not more
so, as having too many references. On the whole, I prefer too many to
too few but it is best to try and strike some happy medium. As
always, the editors and referees have the final say on this topic, of
course.

d. No focus

Many authors seem to have trouble deciding on what is the main
thrust of their research and sticking with it. If you have kept a
research journal (or diary), you may be especially prone to this,
because you will have a record of everything you did. The object in
writing a good, terse paper is to find the main point(s) and stick to
it (or them), without a lot of wandering around. If you use the
method of outlining to organize your paper and can stick to the basic
outline once it's finalized, it should be easy to stay with the
point. If you start wandering away from your outline very far, you
need to think through whether or not the wanderings are really
relevant to your paper. Those off-the-point thoughts may belong
somewhere else.

e. Redundancy

It's been said that you have to repeat something eight times
before you can be reasonably sure your audience will remember it.
Unfortunately, some people carry this too far, by repeating
themselves in the Abstract, the Introduction, the text itself, and
the Summary. If you are going to say over and over what it is you did
and what you found, at least confine the lengthy expositions to the
text proper and keep the summaries at the beginning and end very
short! It gets tiresome to read the same things over and over again,
so most readers will start skimming instead of reading with care at
about the second or third repetition. This may cause them to miss
important points buried in the midst of all that redundancy.

f. Acknowledgments

I offer a simple word to the wise here, paraphrased from my own
graduate advisor's good advice. If you are uncertain about how
much credit to give to someone who helped you out along the way,
always err on the side of giving more credit than you are certain is
due to that person. Think about it. If you helped someone and
they never even acknowledged that help, how likely would it be that
you would help them again? You can offend someone in this way and
they might never say anything about it, but you might wonder why they
are always too busy to help you out when you need it. It's possible
to make an enemy for life in this way and not even know what you've
done. Obviously, it's unwise to burn bridges this way. It doesn't
cost you much to be grateful, and it can pay off in big ways later.
Of course, you should want to be grateful to those who have helped
you because it is the right thing to do, not because of the benefits
you are going to reap. But if you only do it for the benefits, it
still works.

Offering co-authorship is the highest form of acknowledgment, with
inclusion in the "Acknowledgments" section as the next form down the
scale. Clearly, referencing your sources is also a form of
acknowledgment that is important. Where someone's contributions fit
in this order is up to you, of course, but keep in mind the basic
rule (above). If you offer co-authorship and the person chooses not
to accept, they will not be offended by the question; if they feel
their contribution deserves co-authorship and you choose to offer a
lesser acknowledgment, how "collegial" are they likely to be in the
future?

2. Oral presentations

As with writing skills, it is likely that you are going to have a
continuing real need for making effective oral presentations. If you
have time in your course schedule and you have not ever taken a
speech course, this might be a good time to find a spot for a speech
course in your schedule. The main idea is to get some practice at
speaking in "public." If you can get this by joining a local
Toastmasters group (or some other way), then this will work as well.
The main idea is to learn by doing, hopefully with some feedback from
people who are knowledgeable and critical (and, yes, here's another
place where a thick skin is helpful). I make no pretense of being a
professional, but there are many pitfalls to avoid and tips I can
offer to help you learn how to make oral presentations.

a. Learn to omit "filler" from your speaking

Many of us put "filler" in our speech unconsciously. When we are
pausing to gather our thoughts for the next burst of speaking, we
often use such fillers as "y'know," "like,", "uhhh," "well," and so
forth. In order to hear what you do, have some of your discussion
within a small group recorded, preferably when you are unaware of it.
Even when you are aware of it, the playback of your speaking still
can surprise you. A simple device for avoiding this filler is simply
to pause and concentrate on saying nothing during that pause.
Perhaps we do this in our conversations to prevent others from
leaping into our pauses and saying what they want to say. This
habit is inappropriate in a presentation where we are not competing
with others for talking time, and ends up being a distraction. Not
every moment of your presentation needs to be filled with your voice!

b. Maintaining eye contact with your audience

As you speak, it is useful to let your gaze roam about the room
and make eye contact with individuals in the audience. This gives
them the feeling that you are making the speech directly to them. If
the group is small enough, you can do this with everyone in the
audience at one time or another. In a large audience, this may not be
possible and people in the back of a large room may not ever be able
to see your eyes, but you still should look at individuals in the
audience, if for no other reason than to keep yourself aware of
talking to people, not the air. Don't talk only to the overhead
projector or screen, please.

c. Limit the amount of material covered

Although there are no hard and fast rules, you cannot make many
points in a short time. I use as a good "rule of thumb" that I can
only make about one point of substance for each five minutes of
presentation time. Therefore, in a 15 min. talk, I try to make no
more than three major points. Plan your talk accordingly and you
should have no problem finishing your presentation in the allotted
time. By the way, I have never heard anyone complain when I finish
early, on occasion!

d. Limit the number of visual aids you use

Employing a visual aid, such as a figure, or a table, or a
photograph takes time. Each such visual aid usually involves at least
a brief explanation and usually requires that you take some action
(unless you have someone switching viewgraphs or slides or whatever
for you at just the right times with no prompting on your part). I
use the rule of thumb that I should have no more (and preferably,
fewer) visual aids than there are minutes in my presentation. In a 15
min. talk, there should be no more than 15 visual aids. And if the
visuals are multi-media (e.g., both slides and viewgraphs) then each
change from one medium to another is allotted the same time as a
visual aid. Thus, if I have 10 visual aids, and I make 2 transitions
back and forth from slides to viewgraphs and back (so the talk goes
from slides to viewgraphs to slides to viewgraphs to slides), that
makes four transitions and I am just about at my limit for a 15 min.
talk. If you have more visual aids than this, you will find yourself
rushing through them so rapidly that most of the audience will get
very little from any of them. A well-conceived visual aid still must
be visible for about a minute to be certain that the audience has
grasped its contents

e. Do not read your visual aids aloud

If you find yourself reading the contents of your visual aids to
your audience, they will be able to read them silently much faster
than you can read them aloud, so you will end up falling behind your
audience. This is also a monumentally boring way to make a
presentation. If I can read your viewgraphs, why do I need you to do
that for me? A better strategy is to use your visual aids to prompt
you to discuss items in a certain order and to avoid inadvertently
leaving something out.

f. Make sure the content matches the presentation

Most of us have heard talks that seemed wonderful because the
presenter was exciting, or dramatic, or funny, or whatever, and then
when we had time to think about what was said, we discovered that the
actual content of the talk was pretty shallow. And most of us have
heard a speaker who had a lot of real substance to say but who was
simply boring and clueless about how to make an effective talk. Your
presentation should not overshadow what you are trying to say;
rather, it should be focused on getting your points across. Being
"cute" or making forced attempts at humor that are out of context
(e.g., starting out with "A funny thing happened to me on the way to
the Symposium ... " story) are good ways to alienate your audience.
Technical presentations do not have to be boring, but neither should
they be viewed as mere entertainment.

Keeping the knowledge level of your audience in mind is a common
courtesy that few speakers seem to be able to do. If you are
addressing a general audience, you shouldn't be solving nonlinear
partial differential equations during your talk. If you are
addressing a group of faculty members as part of a presentation of
your research findings, you shouldn't include slides of your most
recent family outing. This ought to be common sense, but it is
disappointing how often speakers fail to take into account the type
of audience.

g. Put some variety into your speaking

Most of us have heard speakers who drone on in a monotone, with
little or no sense of feeling in their presentation. If it is true
that you care about your work in some way, it is quite acceptable and
even desirable to have some of that excitement show through in your
talk. Vary the level of your speaking volume; at times you might be
close to shouting, and then revert suddenly to a near-whisper. If
your speaking is always at the same volume level, this encourages
people's attention to drift. The purpose of this is not simply add
drama to your talk ... that would be equivalent to putting
entertainment ahead of content. The point is to get your audience's
attention and keep it. If these "techniques" enable you to accomplish
that, isn't it worth it?

h. Listen to other speakers

As with writing, it is a good practice to attend as many talks as
possible. This allows you to evaluate what speakers do well and what
speakers might do that you definitely want to avoid. Learn how to
evaluate the presentation separately from the content
of the presentation. Your impression of a talk is often influenced by
the presentation quality more than the actual content. Hence, this
skill is something that will obviously be helpful, and you need to
learn how to distinguish these two independent aspects of a talk.

i. Dealing with questions

Most technical presentations include a question and answer
(Q&A) session or at least include opportunities for questions
from the audience. These can be intimidating for new presenters.
There are some important things to keep in mind:

Remember that you are likely to be the expert about the
material you are presenting. If you did the work you claim you
did, then almost certainly no one knows more about your work than
you. There is no real reason to feel intimidated by the audience
if you have done something worthwhile. If you feel uncertain about
its worth, then perhaps you should reconsider making the
presentation!

Some questions might well stump you. Do not feel obligated to
guess an answer unless you admit in advance that you are only
guessing. Ignorance often is forgivable in technical presentations
and if you simply don't know an answer, a simple "I don't know."
can be an appropriate response. If you are uncertain, then admit
your uncertainty. If you made some sort of important mistake or
omission, then admit it and be glad someone found your mistake so
you can fix it. Honesty is definitely the best policy, as trying
to "handwave" your way around a tough question only reduces your
credibility.

Some audience members are on an ego trip and just want to show
off how much they know. Remember that as long as you are
the speaker, you are in control and should not willingly
relinquish that control to someone in the audience. You might
simply interrupt their interruption by asking "Excuse me, do you
have a question or are you just making a statement?"

At other times, a questioner may not accept a simple answer
and wants to engage you in a long argument. This might be
acceptable in some circumstances, but it often monopolizes the
Q&A time that others might want to use. In such a case, it is
quite acceptable to terminate the discussion and suggest that you
will continue the discussion with him or her at the end of your
allotted time, to allow others the chance to ask their questions.

You may get a question like "Did you consider the
Gezockstihagen effect?" or "Did you take into account the
Hyperphantic Theorem?" No matter if you did or did not, a simple
yes or no is probably not going to satisfy the questioner. Be
prepared to justify why you did not account for what is likely to
be his or her pet topic. If it should turn out that you never even
heard of such a thing, say so, and be prepared to defer a lecture
on the subject by the questioner to after your talk.

At times, a question can be confusing. In such cases, it's
valuable to get the questioner to clarify the question. You might
ask "Are you asking me about this-and-that or such-and so?" Or you
might respond with "If I understand your question, you are asking
me to resolve the thermobaric flanxit issue in this case. Is that
correct?" This not only ensures that you are indeed answering the
question as asked, but also may buy you some time to gather your
thoughts on the question.

3. Visual aids

I have already begun to mention some of the basic issues related
to visual aids in the preceding section on oral presentations and
even in writing. Figures and illustrations can be extremely valuable
tools in getting your point across, but if you use them poorly (e.g.,
figure description in a paper, or using poorly -executed figures in a
presentation), then they can be a hindrance to getting your point
across successfully. The term "visual aid" is thereby a misnomer in
such cases. What are the characteristics of a good figure?

a. A good figure makes one point

The object of a figure is to show something; this might include
some theoretical results, characteristics of observed data, or some
structure in calculations based on either theory or data. If a figure
makes too many points, it usually becomes confusing to the point of
not getting any of the points across. If numerical quantities are
involved, the figure makes clear such aspects of the numbers as the
order of magnitude, the scale, and the quantity (or quantities) being
represented. Simple figures generally are more effective than complex
figures. If you find yourself writing a long caption to describe the
content of a figure, then you should consider simplifying that
figure. It is not always true that long captions imply a bad figure,
but as a rule of thumb, if the caption is more than two or three
lines of text, the figure may need simplification.

b. A good figure is readily legible

Figures in papers usually are reduced from their original size.
Figures used in a presentation may be viewed from considerable
distances at the back of the presentation room. If the illustration
is not legible at such distances, then the point will be that much
harder to make. Journals likely will reject illegible figures and if
you use them in a presentation, the audience's attention will be lost
quickly. Visual aids in talks are notoriously bad at scientific
conferences, where tables of small numbers or tiny equations are
jammed onto a single slide or viewgraph. An illegible or confusing
figure is a waste of everyone's time as it cannot possibly succeed in
its mission to make some point. Speakers often use up too much of
their allotted time explaining badly-crafted figures. If a figure
takes more than a moment's explanation, it is not a well-executed
visual aid.

c. A good figure has visual impact without going
overboard

Although they are most common, illustrations or visual aids with
black lines or text on a white background often have minimal visual
impact. If possible, white text or lines on a dark background usually
work better in oral presentations. The written versions may be
acceptable to journals as black on white, but you should always be
aware of the value of illustrations that are visually attractive.
Avoid being garish by using wild embellishments like fancy textures
or psychedelic colors, as these tend to distract from the point being
made. As was the case with your manner of speaking, the object is not
mere entertainment and the point being made should not be overwhelmed
by the presentation.

d. A good figure's appearance is professional-looking

There is nothing inherently wrong with hand-done figures, but most
of us lack the skills needed to make such figures look good. Right or
wrong, the degree of confidence in the reader's or listener's eye is
associated with the figure's professional appearance. Therefore, it
generally is beneficial to have your illustrations done on a computer
or by a draftsperson. There is no guarantee that good, well-executed
figures will result from being done on a computer, though. It still
takes care and skill to get a computer to give a
professional-looking, effective visual aid. In my opinion, the skills
of the professional draftsperson often are underrated, with the
result that many professionals have bad figures that detract from
their intentions.